Wrong amount, wrong time for pay raises

Wednesday

An ongoing legislative effort to give our senators and representatives in Baton Rouge an unseemly pay raise seems to be gathering steam.

A committee of the state Senate last week approved the measure by Sen. Ann Duplessis, D-New Orleans, that would raise the legislatorsí salaries from $16,800 a year to $50,700.

That kind of bump in pay might be justified if the lawmakers were woefully underpaid compared to their peers in neighboring states, if the state were flush with cash after having seen to other, more pressing needs, and if we could expect three times more work in exchange for the vast raises.

None of those conditions is present here.

Louisiana legislators make more than the southern average of their counterparts in other states.

And they are performing a part-time job that they all asked to do.

Each member of the Legislature ran for his or her office fully aware of the salary and of the responsibilities it would entail.

To argue now that their pay is far less than what they deserve is disingenuous.

Finally, the work involved in the job will not change, meaning that the members will be paid three times what they are being paid now to do the same jobs.

The sheer magnitude of the raise -- in dollars and as a percentage of the current pay -- is enough to raise eyebrows and hackles.

Although we respect the jobs our lawmakers do on our behalf, we donít think they deserve to be the ninth-highest-paid legislators in the nation, which they would become according to news accounts.

Our students routinely score at or near the bottom of most national measures. Our roads and bridges are mired in decay. And we continue to face a mounting coastal crisis that will require commitment and creativity to solve.

The last thing we need our leaders spending time doing is handing out pay raises to themselves.

Unfortunately, that is what they were doing in the same week that members of the House approved drastic cuts to proposed spending on education and health care.

We hope that the full Senate shoots down this poorly conceived bill and keeps the pay at its current level.

An independent review board that looked into the pay issue recommended a 12 percent pay raise. Something along those lines would be much more appropriate than this proposal, but even that raise should be better defended than saying the lawmakers must work long hours, the primary argument for the current proposal.

The hours might be long and the pay might be short, but there are people who will serve without the state trebling legislatorsí salaries.

In short, if the conditions arenít suitable to you, leave office and let someone else take a turn.

Editorials represent the opinions of this newspaper, and not of any one person.

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